Two Covelo pot growers were among 18 defendants who pleaded guilty at the end of 2011 and beginning of 2012 in a multi-state federal marijuana prosecution originating in Virginia. The defendants received sentences ranging from five to 18 years in federal prison.

The operation generated profits estimated at $3 million from 2005 until the June 2011 arrests, according to court documents. The operation mailed packages of boutique California marijuana to individuals and groups in Virginia, Georgia, Colorado, Kansas, Missouri, Texas, Louisiana, Florida, New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania.

The ringleader, Anthony Guidry, 46, of Vallejo, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to distribute 100 kilos of marijuana or more and possession of a firearm in the furtherance of a drug trafficking crime, and is now serving 220 months in federal prison.

Guidry could have been sentenced from 40 years to life in prison.

He and all the other defendants also agreed to forfeit all assets including guns, property, a motorcycle, banking accounts and cash discovered by federal agents.

Agents seized 71 total pounds of weed and about $160,000 in cash from various locations during the arrests.

Guidry purchased specialty bud marijuana from a variety of sources throughout Northern California including Anthony Scott Giuliani, 45, and Annette Marie Ross, 52, both of Covelo.

Giuliani and Ross pleaded guilty to conspiracy to distribute 100 kilos of marijuana or more and are now serving five years in federal prison. When a search warrant was executed at their Covelo home, law enforcement found 58 plants, five pounds of processed marijuana, a loaded shotgun and a loaded pistol near the pot, and five other firearms at the residence.

As a condition of the plea deal, they agreed to provide law enforcement with the complete details of their operation and to testify as needed by prosecutors.

Ross began providing Guidry with "wholesale amounts of marijuana that Guidry would sell for profit" in 2005, according to court records. Ross appears to be one of Guidry's earliest confederates. Ross began dating Giuliani in 2007, when she introduced him to Guidry.

Ross and Giuliani admitted to growing pot at their Covelo residence for Guidry and to purchasing pot from a number of other local growers living in and around Covelo. Based on wiretap conversations, Ross was likely an occasional courier for Guidry.

Guidry also had an expanding group of distributors, some of whom apparently mailed pot with other hard drugs in packages typically weighing between three and 10 pounds. The distributors recruited individual sales representatives, many of whom broke down the blocks of weed into ounce packets for personal sales.

Guidry purchased pot for as little as $1,200 per pound; the distributors typically received more than $5,000 per pound in return. One of the group's biggest challenges was moving the cash around without attracting attention from bank regulators. Another was shipments of pot and cash getting "lost in the mail."

One of his East Coast distributors recruited an ever-growing group of friends and family members willing to accept pot shipments to avoid raising the suspicions of postal, Fedex and UPS workers. The group admitted it was "sometimes necessary and prudent to use violence to enforce debts" in court documents.

Whenever a bank became too inquisitive, members of the group would open a new account at a different bank or arrange for a courier to fly out to transport the cash.

The entire plot began to unravel when Virginia police arrested Moataz Mohammad Masoud in January 2010 with $2,000 cash, three pounds of pot and a sales list of people owing him a total of $20,000. Masoud was still on probation after a 2008 conviction for intent to deliver marijuana for sale.

Masoud phoned several members of the network from the tapped phone at the jail asking for help to collect enough money to pay for his lawyer. Detectives from a growing number of state and federal agencies began investigating the people Masoud called. By the time the conspirators were arrested in June 2011, agents had intercepted more than 14,000 calls or texts from across the nation and tracked 38 marijuana packages and 21 bulk-cash packages.

Most of the individual conspirators received five-year prison sentences; the main distributors got 90 months. In exchange for a reduction in the number of counts and charges, all defendants agreed to provide law enforcement with detailed accounts of their operations.